Typically, a person performs most efficiently and most comfortably when working in a familiar environment. For example, office equipment or a particular office device, such as a digital telephone, an office desktop (i.e., a Personal Computer), or a facsimile machine, may provide a plethora of features. Knowledge of the particular commands required to access those features and operate that equipment or device may be obtained, in some cases, only after attending an initial training session and using the equipment or device for several days, or even several weeks. Once that knowledge has been obtained, a person is comfortable and efficient with that equipment or device.
However, on occasion, a person may have to use different office equipment or devices, hereinafter collectively referred to as devices. This may occur because the person has moved to another job, or is on the road at a hotel or a remote office, or the employer has obtained newer equipment, or the employer has obtained temporary replacement equipment, or the employer uses different equipment in other areas of the office or even side-by-side in the same office. When confronted with the different device, the efficiency of that person will drop because that person must take the time to learn how to use that different device. Further, that person will not initially be comfortable with using that different device. If the features of that different device are very different than the devices that the person is familiar with, that person may experience frustration, which further reduces efficiency and job performance. In extreme cases, such as where the instructions for operating the equipment are in a language that the person does not understand, then the person may not be able to perform a job function at all.
Using an unfamiliar, unsecured device or set can also adversely affect safety and security where the remote person needs to transmit or receive information regarding the safe use of a machine or a chemical, and can adversely affect the financial success of a person or an employer, such as where the person needs to transmit or receive information or contact another persons regarding business or making an offer to supply or purchase services or material. Additionally, costs associated with processing internal (intra-enterprise) telephone calls, e-mails, faxes, and other information sharing and exchanging, are much lower than costs associated with processing such information externally. In addition, a person in an office, especially a person in management, will have access to financial and other information via servers in accounting, personnel, production, shipping, etc. Thus, information and communication are essential to safety and prosperity.
The traveling person will typically be exposed to many different environments and devices, in hotels, in remote offices, and while using commercial or private transportation. Operating procedures and commands cannot simply provide a standard, permanent set of procedures and commands because devices are constantly being improved to provide additional features, and because a permanent set of procedures and commands would have to be designed for a complex device or set, possibly contemplating features that are not even in existence, would generally be unnecessarily complex or cumbersome for a similar, simpler device, or a device which provided fewer features.
Consider a typical office environment where the user can send and receive e-mails and faxes, or can instruct someone else to send faxes, all using familiar equipment, access servers for information, etc. The user can place and receive telephone calls using a familiar office telephone and the familiar office voicemail system. The user can conference calls, transfer calls, put calls on hold, speed dial business associates, business contacts, friends, family, etc., all from the office telephone set. If the office has a data network, and possibly Internet services, the user may also be able to store, retrieve, transfer, modify, manipulate, etc., different types of information, such as audio, video, facsimile, text, data, spreadsheets, drawings, etc., by using a familiar computer connected to a familiar set of servers or hosts within a corporate enterprise.
However, the user may not be at this office. The user may be traveling on business, or pleasure, and be at another location, for example, a hotel in a country other than the United States, or even be on an airplane. The hotel would provide a telephone in the user's room for the user's convenience and, to call the office, the user would use the room telephone to dial the hotel long distance access code, the country code, and the office telephone number. This call would then be routed by appropriate telephone companies and long distance carriers to the PBX, ACD, CENTREX, etc., at the destination office, which would then route the call to the specified office telephone.
At this point, the only new information that the user has needed to know are the access code for a long distance call, and the country code. However, assume now that the user wishes to add another party, that is, the user wishes to create a conference call. Is the hotel telephony system configured to support a conference call? If not, the user must depend upon the called party to set up the conference call or obtain operator assistance. Further, even if the hotel telephone system is configured to support a conference call, what are the access codes that must be entered to instruct the hotel telephone system to create a conference call? What if the user is in Japan, and the two parties that the user wishes to add to the conference call are in England and The United States? In this case, even if the user can determine the necessary access codes to create a conference call from the hotel in Japan, the user will be paying for two long distance telephone calls, which results in significantly higher costs.
Consider another case wherein the user wishes to make two separate calls. The user must dial all of the necessary long distance access codes and country code digits for each call. In addition, each call has its own associated charges for setting up the call, and possibly a minimum charge for each call. Again, the user will be paying for two long distance telephone calls.
Consider still another case wherein the user wishes to obtain certain information from the office, possibly in order to send that information to another person. The user may call the office and ask someone to obtain the information and send it to the specified person. But what if, because of the time difference, there is no one in the office? If the user has a portable computer the user might be able to call the office data network and retrieve the document from a server, but then what? The user would have the document on the portable computer, but may not have a way to print the document or to send it.
Also, even if the user can place telephone calls, the problem is only half solved. The user may wish to receive telephone calls as well. Of course, the user could give his itinerary (locations, telephone numbers, and dates), to certain persons, who would know how to contact the user, but what if a calling party called at lunch, or on a weekend. There would be no one to provide the information to the calling party. The user could give his itinerary to his business contacts, but what if an unexpected business opportunity or problem arose and the user had not provided his itinerary to that business contact. The user could, in theory, activate call forwarding and forward all calls to the user's remote location. But some telephone systems and some offices do not allow external call forwarding, especially if the forwarded destination is long distance. Plus, if long distance forwarding is permitted, each forwarded call incurs a long distance charge which the user or his company must pay, even if the incoming call is unwanted or is a wrong number.
Therefore, the problem to be solved is how to provide a user with the ability to remotely access and use all the services and/or devices available at the user's office and/or the corporate enterprise, or at the user's home, regardless of where the user is currently located, and regardless of what equipment or devices are present at the remote location, just as though the user was still in his/her local office or at home.
Another aspect of the problem to be solved is how to provide a user with the ability to use the features available on the equipment and devices at the user's office, regardless of where the user is currently located, and regardless of what equipment or devices are present at the location of the user.